


As Hasari

by zacreblue



Category: Shades of Magic - V. E. Schwab
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, Adjacent with A Conjuring of Light, Character Death, Multi, Post-Canon, Sort Of, Spoilers for A Conjuring of Light, aka brief descriptions of injuries/etc although vague, i cried while writing part of this, some verge on pun territory but that's just how it is, there are a lot of metaphors here folks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-02
Updated: 2019-11-02
Packaged: 2021-01-18 16:42:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21279926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zacreblue/pseuds/zacreblue
Summary: As Hasari - to heal. Thoughts from a few of the central characters on love and loss, endings and beginnings. Takes place within scenes throughout ACOL, along with a few bits that are epilogue-esque.
Relationships: Alucard Emery/Rhy Maresh, Delilah Bard/Kell Maresh
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	As Hasari

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for descriptions of character deaths that take place in ACOL.

Loss cuts like a blade, and never quite heals the same each time. Lila sometimes thinks that with every loss she undertakes, the universe seems to make an exchange for more freedom, for more ability, for cunning. What a sick game, that she survives so often, and the favor lands along her blade and never in so many other peoples' fortunes. She's lost so many people to risk, to ruin, and to ash. She almost loses herself in Rozenal. She remembers the panic that she never saw coming, and the shock of it all is what still wakes her up from time to time.  
When it wakes her, she listens to Kell's breathing, the rise and fall, and reminds herself that she can stay this time.  
And when Kell grins sleepily at her in the dim daylight hours later, she remembers that there is also adventure even in familiar things.

Such a tumultuous stillness. He moves through marble halls which are cloaked in hollow, somehow faded white, and it's all he does. He keeps moving, has to keep moving, forcing himself to, and being forced when he has no other choice. At the very end however, nothing is still. It's a whirlwind. Marble halls and pillars turn to silver trees with patterns and markings brushed and spotted across them like charcoal. And the sky.  
The sky is blue.  
Not like the deep jewel toned oceans off the coast of Arnes, but eggshell blue, and he aches a little as he sees its hue emanate through the twisting canopy above.  
He's not sure whether the leaves are falling or floating, he just feels the energy of them within the woods, the wind they cast against his cheeks, and he feels everything start to flow.  
Nothing is quite so still anymore, at the end, and in those moments Holland finally rests.

First it was his heart.  
Quick to follow was his family. His honor, his voice. And then the chains.  
And then there were sails above him, a crew that would later become a new family.  
Alucard Emery stares into the mirror that he paid such a high price for, but the toll is merely an afterthought now, lying in a comforting blanket of dark with the creaking of a ship around him. He's gotten proficient in handling the sway that comes with being on land again after so much time at sea, but when he first saw Rhy again only weeks ago, he swears he had to fight to keep standing.  
Rhy has always been the one to knock the earth out from beneath him, knowingly or not.  
The metallic edge of the mirror is cool silver, but he holds it firm between his fingers. He doesn't shiver at the memory of it around his wrists, the searing heat of irons and then the painful chill of everything after - he doesn't. If he does, he focuses on everything that's changed, everything he knows now, everything he can still do.  
Every whim and every calloused shield he's had to raise against each and every storm stirs up within him, and he feels that magnetic tug pulling him back to the ones he loves.  
The force of it moves him every time, leads him back home.  
He follows it again, across the glassy sea, back to fog concealed chaos, and then to the aftermath of it all, where the tide finally leaves him.  
When Alucard enters the throne room, the mirror is a pool filled to the brim, and he holds it up with all it contains, humming with the force of memories and yearnings and hopes.  
He hopes it's enough.  
He flashes a smile first, partly because it's always been his best shield, but mostly because he can't help himself. He's hammered his guilt into something new, something stronger, and he knows he has nothing left to lose.  
Alucard grins, and it's small, but he can't help himself. He's home.

Flame, fire, ash, sleep, wake, fall, falter.  
Rhy has spent so much time falling and tumbling. Through doorways and in and out of parties, into his brother's arms, his mother's arms, his father's weary gaze. Into his bed, into shadows, and out of them again.  
He sleeps a lot for someone who despises it so much.  
He never used to despise it.  
Luc makes it easier, and when he's not there, Rhy buries his nose in soft white fur, or blinks back at soft purple cat eyes.  
At times he's almost thankful for his losses. He's lost his naivety, but that brought him his wisdom, and he never really had to lose any of his charm, his passion - he just learned to focus it, to hone it.  
He hopes his king would be proud. His mother too.  
His foundations bent and warped and melted around him, all so quickly and so loudly. He was there to see each one.  
He's still not sure whether he's glad about that fact, or wishes it were the other way around.  
All of the smiles and laughter and boldness were always his to wield in the world, and now Rhy gathers all his love and loss up and weaves it into a crown to bear, to carry, and he adds all those parts of himself that were often disheveled and unclear to those around him and he knows their worth, the light and magic and power to do good that burns like fuel at his very core.  
The Red Palace is made of glass, but with that glass is also steel. See, his foundations never really left him. They stand to remind him of who he is, and who he still wants to be.  
Rhy could never bend a flame like his brother, but now he knows how to bend the world to his own heat, his own light. Before, he was a burning star, and now he's bright sunlight, shining rays, like the starburst pendant of Arnes, of his people.  
While they slept in the streets, he woke.

Kell has lost and gained, gained and lost. It’s all in the cycle of things, he supposes. Tieren once likened love and loss to a ship on the sea. Kell thinks now that perhaps the same can be said for how the universe favors the exact things that you love and hold close the best you can. It casts them up and down, down and up, and all in between.  
He’s lost Rhy in more ways than one and more than one too many times, and in each of those moments it felt like his own self became trapped in a dark doorway between his own world and one without his brother. His best friend. He remembers each painful half-second of paralyzing fear, of the unknown, the shattering of a tether that was meant to be unbreakable.  
Kell’s love for people, for magic, for that gap in the pages between life and everything else, the utter mystery of it all - that’s what makes him up. The fabric of him. The shades he wears. It's all love.  
It's the vibrant red he sees in his veins like the glow of the Isle, of Rhy’s wine-toned tunics, Lila’s all-knowing smirk, the rosy warmth in Hastra’s cheeks when he would laugh.  
Burning that small slip of paper bearing the secrets to his past was so, so easy, he thinks, compared to other trials. For whatever reason, Hastra was a different kind of hurt. It was brutal in its simpleness, how it happened; how it all quickly became a deep, heavy wash of crimson. The way it stretched and pulled at him all the way back to London, and beyond the fight that was waiting.  
Everything was so easily blackened by pain and adrenaline, and it's been fading back out since.  
Along with the ridiculous stripe of silver hair that Lila always pokes fun at now. Because she knows she can. Because he loves her.  
Sometimes it's Lila's sharpest bursts, flickers and sparks of her words, her constant action, that ground him the most.  
Everything is contradictions, it seems.  
Maybe that's why he knows even now that the worst is over. That they're all bound together, him and Lila, him and Rhy, Rhy and Alucard, and so many others.  
In the grand sea of things, they're all tethered.

Hastra always was a bit intimidated by Tieren; thought that perhaps the priest could always tell he hadn't first chosen to be a part of life at the sanctuary. That he would rather be at the Palace, would rather be guarding than nurturing. The latter was always a part of him, however. Magic nurtured him, and he nurtured that affinity, using it to nurture even smaller things, being so very kind to whatever things were more vulnerable to unkindness.  
Despite his suspicions about what Tieren thought of him as an apprentice, they were only passing anxieties, and he quickly saw the genuine center to the priest's being, the subtle tilts to his features and warm timbre to his laugh, strong and rich like dark wood. Hastra always could find a calling, make it his own, spread it out like rich soil and watch his magic lead things to grow.  
He always loved that saying of Tieren's, that love and loss were like a ship on the sea. Hastra had thought that message had been a small utterance, a secret passage, that Tieren shared with him alone one day. But now he knows he's not the only one who's heard it. Or at least he figures he isn't. It's too good not to share, it really is.  
When Hastra sways in tandem with the water below and falls against the sea-soaked wood of the deck that night, he feels the small blossoming plant slip out from the folds in his clothing where it had been tucked away. It's all he focuses on for one bleary moment, and then there's Kell, and his hair always was so red, and so was his coat, but he's not wearing it now is he, and oh, look, there's still so much red, and it's such a vibrant red, too, and.  
And it's so sad, that he has to love. It really is. It's too strong and too true not to act on.  
It really, really is.  
Maybe that's a fault of his own, the leaps he takes, but he thinks of what the world would be like without such vital faults, and even as Kell starts to shout, and the cold begins to mix in with the warm, Hastra feels himself smile.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first fic I've finished and posted in years now! I'm honestly surprised I even got it done, even though it ended up being a totally different length than I pictured at first :)  
It's also been over a year since I read ACOL so I may have gotten some details wrong that I can go back and fix...  
I definitely want to add more to Lila and Holland's parts, as well, since they're my two favourites. But it's 2 am and I have to wake up in three hours.  
Thanks for reading!! Find me on tumblr @ philosophy-juice


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